August 3, 2008

Things you might not notice unless you go to the enlargement: pigeons on the roller coaster, toddler has a red squirt gun, the man in front is not eating a hot dog (but a striated pastry of some sort).

Note: We see men in shorts here, but I don't disapprove. It's the beach and the shorts are longish. Many men are wearing heavy blue jeans, which seems unwise. I think the striated pastry guy has the best fashion sense: lightweight, light-colored, long pants.

I’m old enough to remember when most people around here didn’t know what a tamale or an enchilada was. Or, when it was hard to find a Mexican restaurant here in New York. Although, it’s still hard to find a good Mexican restaurant.

On the carousel you go round and round,On the ferris wheel you go round and round,And it never gets tired going round and roundTo the susurrating susurrating background soundOf the sea, the sea, lapping up and down, up and down.

If you need a churro, there is a guy who sells them in the passage way between the F train and the 6 at the 42nd St stop. He usually has them laid out on a flat board cover with saran wrap sitting on top of some milk crates. He is between the guy playing the accordion and the dude with the bootleg DVD’s.

Available with extra powdered sugar. Great to pick up a couple to have with your morning coffee.

I never buy food from street vendors. Too risky. Who could you sue or blame or seek revenge upon if, heaven forbid, the food you consumed was poisoned or tampered with or spoiled?

You'd buy something (a hot dog, a pretzel, a piece of fruit, a churro), walk away...eat it at your leisure, and then...10 blocks away or 30 minutes later, you'd suddenly succumb to whatever illness or side effect present in the street vendor's food!

How would anyone be able to trace the food, or track down the evil vendor? These vendors, all they have to do is pack up their little cart and they're off, never to be seen again. At least if you ate in a restaurant, and kept your receipt, there'd be some record of what you ate. And restaurants wouldn't dare mess with their food because they're in a fixed location and can always be found.

And if the unthinkable happened, you died, there'd be no way to even provide a shred of a description of the who/where/when to the authorities.

ZPS--and yet, life goes on, and unlicensed vendor carts sell food to the masses with no great consequence. O miraculous free market!

Some of my favorite places to eat have gotten "C" ratings from health inspectors. (That's as low as they can be and still be open.) It used to concern me but then I realized that what a health inspector considers a problem isn't necessarily what I consider a problem. And vice-versa.